Slick Barry

by Bruce Walker - May 19th, 2009 - American Thinker

Democrats hold the White House and comfortable majorities in both houses of Congress. Their new president comes from humble beginnings. He grew up without the moral influence of a father. Unlike Gore and Kerry, who were born with silver spoons in their mouths, or even Carter, Dukakis, Mondale, or Humphrey, who came from upper middle class homes, Barack Obama has little in common with presidential candidates of either political party, except for one: Bill Clinton. Both men transcended their humble roots by receiving elite education and succeeding in electoral politics.

The American people of 40 years ago would not have voted for either of these two men, Clinton (Slick Willie) or Obama (Slick Barry). Coming off a war with Hitler and Mussolini, even those who were not experts in economics understood that socialism was a failed system. Even though we had aided Russia during the war, the history of Stalin's purges limited how many regular Americans were willing buy in to the communist propaganda that Russia was funding to subvert our free enterprise system.

However that was before the Baby Boomers were spoiled rotten. We now have two generations that think it is perfectly rational to vote themselves anything, just because they want it. As they took over American society they sabotaged our schools and turned them in to propaganda mills for socialism. We now have two generations of children who have no first hand experience with the evil that Frederick Hayek called "The Road to Serfdom" and that Ayn Rand defined so well in her book "Atlas Shrugged". The Baby Boomer professors have actually banned these two books from acceptable reading material so few of our young have ever read either.

As these self absorbed narcissists have take over society, actually doing anything successfully before running for public office has become unnecessary. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have excelled not because of any skill at leading, but due exclusively to the skill of talking. What kind of world they will leave is totally dependent on luck, and right now America's luck is running out.

There is a famous poem called "My creed" about being in the arena, but I don't think that Theodore Roosevelt was talking about the arena of politics. There is a serious problem when schmoozing is the only real skill that someone brings to the power of being an elected "leader". Jimmy Carter was a great schmoozer too and yet it took him less than 4 years to nearly destroy our nation because he was not a leader. He was nothing but a politically correct left wing hack. Bill Clinton had the incredible good luck that the greatest surge in productivity in history, the "world wide web", started just as he took office. Every screw up he made was covered up by the growth in economic wealth driven by this huge surge in economic productivity which led to a boom based on the illusion that it would go on forever. Even as the surge ended Clinton left office so he was able to duck accountability for the bust that followed.

I don't think that Barack Obama is going to be able to count on that kind of luck. The horrible aspect is that his failures will damage America too. We can't evade responsibility for that though, since it was in great part the unwillingness of conservatives and libertarians to fight the culture war when it mattered which led to his success. That the majority of our citizens think they can vote themselves "bread and circuses" is our fault too.

Americans need to realize that just as the greatness of Rome ended when the people failed to appreciate what they had and thought they could vote themselves ease forever, America can end in the same disaster. Barack Obama seems destined to lead that collapse.